


white sky

by Eddaic



Category: Gintama
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Pillow Fights, anyway happy holidays everyone, baby joui, mature themes, this was supposed to be a christmas fic but it turned into a general winter thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9131662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eddaic/pseuds/Eddaic
Summary: He is six and snow means death.





	

A/n: warnings for mature themes.

**White Sky**

He is six and snow means death. Veins of faint blue thread through the bone-white corpses, and the savage red of their slit throats freezes to crusted black. The gnawing hunger in his belly has for a month been his faithful companion. It is not the kind of faith he likes.

He is seven and his name is Gintoki ( _Gin-to-ki_ , such an odd, stuttering thing, the hammering of steel), because Shouyou says it is, and snow means huddling in a blanket and wolfing down a stick of dango as the world outside is leached of colour. Winter remains an old enemy, and its teeth gleam no less baleful. Shouyou kneels by his side and pours him steaming green tea with long, elegant hands (so far from the swollen, stiff fingers of the dead). He ignores it and clambers onto the older man's lap, wrapping himself around him like a vine and sticking his nose into the crook of his neck.

He is eight and snow means nothing, neither good nor bad; it just sits there till someone decides to do something with it (or about it). The other children shriek with laughter outside while he cuddles Shouyou's sheathed sword in lieu of a toy and stares at the pale pink sky. The leather is cold, but a comforting sort of cold, strong and reassuring like the broad expanse of Shouyou's back.

Gintoki is nine and a snowball hits him square in the nose: _splat_. He calmly wipes his face with his sleeve as Takasugi hollers, "Hey, what's the matter? Don't you know how to play?" His cheeks are apple-red with the cold and a scarf muffles his voice a bit. Then he turns and says, "Oi, Zura, stop that and join the snowball fight. You're such a girl."

Zura glances up from the snow bunny he is carefully carrying back to the dojo and frowns.

"Why are _you_ calling him Zura?" says Gintoki, miffed. "I call him that." When he'd looked at Zura for the first time, he had thought his hair was too _nice_ to be real. What kind of motherless child had the means or time to maintain hair like that? It had to be a wig. That opinion changed, of course, when he tugged Zura's ponytail in class hard enough to make the boy fall out of his seat. (Zura had started bawling, too, which earned Gintoki hall-wiping duty for a week.)

"It suits him. Why can't I call him Zura, anyway? Is there some kind of copyright?" says Takasugi.

Gintoki moulds a satisfyingly round, firm snowball, and almost feels regretful that it will be wasted on the midget's face. "What's a copy write? Do you write copies of something?"

" _No_ , you _idiot_ – "

He shouldn't be surprised, but he is, when the next day he comes to consciousness with a clogged-up nose and a throbbing headache. _Not falling ill_ is something he always prided himself on, because _falling ill_ meant _not waking up_ , until a rather short time ago. Sniffling miserably, he wonders what Takasugi had bribed the gods (or the devil, more like) with to still be perfectly ( _smugly_ ) healthy.

For a few hours he naps, and when he open his eyes he finds a plate of onigiri beside his futon and Zura sitting primly on his knees by the wall.

"Am I not allowed to eat these?" asks Gintoki, sitting up and scratching his hair. "Why are you putting them here if I can't, you weirdo?"

"You can eat them," replies Zura. "I didn't say you couldn't."

Gintoki isn't that hungry, actually. His skin feels too hot and his head hurts and he just wants to lie down. Preferably in the shade, forever. That sounds like the best thing, about now. "You take a couple."

They eat onigiri in companionable silence. Gintoki wonders, briefly, if snow was created first so that creatures could huddle together for cosiness, and only second to strip the landscape. When they're done Zura removes the plate and pulls another blanket from the closet, which he drapes over Gintoki. As Zura sits back down, Gintoki notices the slight quaking of his thin shoulders. "Get in here," he mumbles, holding up the tattered blankets.

"No," says Zura, indignant, "I'll fall sick, too."

"No, you won't. You're too hardworking to fall sick."

"What kind of logic is that?" Zura responds shrilly.

Gintoki pulls him, ignoring his loud protests, next to him onto the futon. Zura grumbles and complains, but after a while stops trying to squirm away and curls up like a dormouse. At length his breathing grows even and his lips purse. Gintoki fumbles for the other boy's hand, finds it chilled and chapped and scrawny. Malnourished. He fiddles with the bony fingers, closes them into a fist. Then he scoots closer so their noses are almost touching, and allows himself to dream.

He wakes at some ungodly hour in the morning to a pillow hitting him repeatedly on the head.

"You _stubid berm_!" says Zura hoarsely. "I'b tellig Shouyou Sensei you gave me your fever, even when I warned you against it!"

"Ah," Gintoki says and yanks Zura's hair.

They both receive hall-wiping duty, and they are to begin as soon as they are better. Zura, in a rare moment of pettiness, mumbles that he never got punished before he met 'you two plagues on bushido'. Shouyou puts them firmly to bed and makes them spiced tea, and Gintoki accidentally-on-purpose bumps Zura's shoulder so his tepid drink sloshes into his lap. There is more laughter than offence in Zura's surprised yelp, and he sets both their tea cups aside before tackling Gintoki into the futon and muffling his face with a pillow. It quickly degenerates into a small-scale war, in which neither and yet both are the winners.

It's winter and the world is dead, but Gintoki thinks there is some warmth to be found tucked in the creases around Zura's eyes.

_-finis-_


End file.
